Claus Von Hessburg

A CLEVER transport application, which makes it easy to stitch together city transit journeys with or without the need for a private car, is expected to undermine the demand for new cars and disrupt the current dealership business model.

Designed to play a part in developing intelligent transport systems that are slowly spreading across many cities, the TripGO app integrates data from all types of transport to formulate the most efficient means of reaching a desired destination.

This makes it easier to live without, or be less reliant on, a car especially in inner suburban areas, said Tripgo developer Claus von Hessburg.

Dealers needed to consider creating new streams of revenue in order to counter the falling levels of motorisation in congested urban areas, said Mr von Hessburg, who is a founder and the CEO of SkedGO.

“The car-makers are already wise to the danger of mobility as a service,” he said after presenting at the 23rd ITS World Congress in Melbourne.

Mobility as a service (MaaS) refers to the use of apps and real-time data to address the transport system as a whole. This gives the user enhanced travel options that would not be apparent otherwise. It also encompasses the future use of autonomous vehicles, perhaps deployed as fleets, which can be summoned to take passengers where they want to go and then move on to the next job.

“So, if you look at BMW, you look at Daimler, you look at Ford, they all have continuity programs because, if you look at it from a car-maker’s point of view, MaaS is an existential threat,” Mr von Hessburg said.

In the northern hemisphere, Daimler has moovel, Ford has Pass and BMW has invested in Moovit.

The car-makers have new brands that don’t rely on the ownership of cars.

“They have seen the writing on the wall for years. They have new brands that don’t rely on the ownership of cars.”

Mr von Hessburg worked closely with the automotive industry for years producing exhibitions and events and knows what it is like to have a business disrupted by megatrends.

“I used to be in exhibition halls all over Australia for almost two decades,” he said. “My previous company, Design Troup, was an exhibition and event company and when it came to Australian motor shows, about 50 per cent of all the floor space on these motor shows (was for) our clients, from the big brands to the small brands.

“So I know the automotive industry, I know the dealer network, and I have seen the squabbles. I am very familiar with that.”

But the advent of the Internet and falling attendance numbers put an end to motor shows.

“I have seen how the big shakeup a decade ago caused the whole motor show industry to collapse, because there was not enough money for this kind of marketing activity,” Mr von Hessburg said.

The move by car-makers into alternative transport options was an indication that the traditional dealership model may also be about to change, he said.

“If the dealers sit purely on the car sales and car servicing model, they will probably atrophy. They will have to come along on this (MaaS) road because the change is happening.”

Mr von Hessburg said he believed dealers would be able to integrate into the MaaS trend. While practical autonomous cars are still a decade away, Mr von Hessburg said that someone had to own these robot cars that will be summoned by apps and deliver people to their destinations.

Someone has to own these robot cars that will be summoned by apps and deliver people to their destinations. Dealers could run autonomous cars off their lots.

“The vehicle fleet in future will be smaller, but there will be more cars on the road because each vehicle will be in use more often that cars now,” he said.

“A dealer could run autonomous cars off his lot. That’s just one thing that comes to mind.”

“And there are all sorts of other things if the dealer understands the mobility requirements of his city. By all means they should tap into that and see whether there is some other aspect of mobility that they can service, what else they can do that helps the citizens of the city to get around, that they can leverage.”

Mr von Hessburg said SkedGO’s TripGO app was the basis for the official Rio Olympic app that helped games goers find their way around Rio during the Olympic Games. The app won the Rio Olympic Transport Challenge to become the official app.

SkedGO also sells the application programming interface to other corporates so they can brand the app as their own. Xerox in the US uses the app to run its GoLA and GoDenver apps while, in Australia, Optus uses it for their staff and visitors and also integrates its own in-house shuttle service.

He said it was the first transport app that harnesses all available transport modes, public and private, in a particular city to give users the potential of finding optimal transit routes.

The TripGO trip planner for Melbourne includes all Public Transport Victoria services, taxis, car parks, Uber, car-sharing services like GoGet and FlexiCar. It also has the Melbourne bike share system and many of the services included give real time information.

Two weeks ago SkedGO signed a deal with Uber which focusses on the first mile and last mile between public transport and the user’s destination.

It might suggest driving to the train station, catching the train to town and using a taxi for the last leg.

The user enters his or her criteria into the TripGO app and these are taken into account when TripGO draws up a suggested transit plan. It might suggest driving to the train station, catching the train to town and using a taxi for the last leg.

SkedGO’s lead software engineer Adrian Schoenig said TripGO could organise your travel for the whole day.

“If you connect your calendar to TripGO, it will plan your day and make sure you arrive for all the events on time, and send notifications for when to leave for the next one,” Mr von Hessburg said.

“And it does this in a very smart way which also considers user’s private vehicles. So it makes sure that, if you have an event for two hours and you need to park your car, there is reasonable parking, cost-efficient parking available.”

“We are aggregating a whole lot of data. At the moment we’re covering about 200 cities, 10 entire countries, most of them in Europe, and we continue expanding our coverage. At the moment we have over 700 service providers integrated in our platform and for all the results that our backend is providing, they are all very personalised to the users’ needs.

“TripGO considers the users’ preferences according to how relatively they value time against money, against the environmental impact of their journeys and the convenience of the trip as well.”

By Ian Porter